


Body Language

by CeruleanDarkangelis



Series: Without Words [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Clubbing, Dancing, Dirty Dancing, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, No Dialogue, No Smut, POV First Person, POV John Watson, Pining, Pre-Slash, Songfic, sorta voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 10:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4703510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CeruleanDarkangelis/pseuds/CeruleanDarkangelis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a language to dancing; a call-and-response from one body to another. Even with the poncy kind of dancing I knew he was versed in, the kind that requires classes and counting and rules, there is communication between bodies. Watching him now, I’m more than pleased to discover that he understands my dialect as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Body Language

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everybody! I promised I'd be back after my debut, and here it is. Not a multi-chapter fic like my first one, just a quick little one-shot, but I love it. And now that it's done, I can work on my next project, which IS a longer story. 
> 
> It appears that I have a thing for a dancing Sherlock, but I found this song and just couldn't resist :D It did turn into a sort of experiment to write something descriptive with little to no dialogue, which was an interesting challenge.
> 
> The song for this story is Body Close by Lyves x Synkro. I have it on firm authority (my beta, specifically) that this is absolutely essential to the experience!
> 
> And as per ususal, oodles and heaps of thanks to my lovely beta, [leyley09](http://archiveofourown.org/users/leyley09/pseuds/leyley09) for her ridiculously prompt and thorough services!
> 
> Enjoy, and let me know what you think!!

 

 

 

The distant slam of the door two floors down is my signal. Just as I had guessed (known), he’s off again. It was only a matter of time. The tension level in the flat has been inching closer and closer to the breaking point over the last few days; tonight, it had reached critical mass. Something has to give. One way or another, this ends tonight.

For a long time I thought it was me; that he could see my feelings for him despite how hard I worked to keep them hidden. Flattered...married to his work...blah blah blah. The first month we lived together, I learned how to hide my longings behind platonic banter and casual touch. Just enough to indulge myself a little, not enough to alarm. I had thought I was doing well, acting normal, just another bloke with a flatmate. Then the distance began to creep in. The eloquent silences, the sudden understanding of personal space, the abrupt disappearances behind a taciturn bedroom door. And now, this.

I grab my keys and phone, run down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk, hail a cab and feel grateful that it’s summer, no need for a coat. I’ve been dressed and ready to go for at least an hour, waiting for this. I had hoped that the playful hair ruffle I gave him on my way up to my room for the night would push him over the edge. It seems I was right.

I give the cabbie the address that I had first followed him to several months ago, a squat concrete building at the edge of the warehouse district, obviously converted to a nightclub of some kind, though oddly quiet. I hadn’t been prepared to actually follow him inside yet. Nor any time since then. Always to the same club, always for just a few hours, always leaving alone. Instead I waited, and I watched.

I know that on some level he thinks I’m an idiot. To be fair, compared to him I am an idiot. But I’m not completely blind. I’ve been around him enough to pick up a few deductive skills of my own. There’s no evidence of drug use on him after these jaunts. No casual sex either. The only residue of these nighttime disappearances are sweaty clothes in the hamper and a renewed easiness between us, all tension discarded, everything back to normal. Does he truly think I don’t see the correlation? Or is it that he wants me to pick up the clues and bring this to a close? No matter; I’m making my decision tonight.

I exit the cab and climb the stairs that cling to the side of the nondescript building. There’s a line snaking down the stairwell, but I’ve prepared for this, dressed the part. A quick word and discreet bribe to the bouncer earn me entrance to the club.  I step inside and find myself on a catwalk that runs the perimeter of the interior. On the far side is a bar; the other three sides have tables lining the walls. Everything is stark black, save for large spotlights in each corner that cycle through a rainbow of colors, one bleeding into the next. Against the railing, two on each side, are DJ booths, each one trimmed in LED lights, each a different color. Ah, there’s the reason it’s so quiet in here.

Circular staircases at each corner of the catwalk lead down the the floor of the building where a writhing mass of humanity dances in silence. Each one of them wears a pair of headphones, trimmed in colored LEDs to match the DJs on the the catwalk above. I watch as a small pocket of green breaks out in one corner of the floor, while red spreads along the other side, the dancers flipping channels to see what their neighbors are hearing. The overall effect is that of a pulsing rainbow from wall to wall. In the center of that rainbow, I finally spot Sherlock.

There is a language to dancing; a call-and-response from one body to another. Even with the poncy kind of dancing I knew he was versed in, the kind that requires classes and counting and rules, there is communication between bodies. Watching him now, I’m more than pleased to discover that he understands my dialect as well.

Purple. Of course, his chosen DJ would be purple. He’s dead center of the floor, eyes closed, body soft and languid, moving to whatever music he currently hears. Judging by his body, it’s something soft and languid as well; something with a beat, certainly, but a gentle heartbeat rather than a driving rhythm.

The purple DJ booth is across the way, on the side of the room with the bar. Perfect. I make my way through the crowd and order a beer. Turning back with my drink, I sidle up near the purple booth and lean my arms on the rail, sipping occasionally and continuing my surveillance, unobserved by the one person in this place who matters.

How graceful he is like this, all his sharp planes and jutting angles now rounded and softened. Even his harsh cheekbones seem softer without those laser sharp eyes peering out above them. All his abrasiveness has been smoothed away, which apparently dupes a few poor sods into trying to dance with him, men and women alike, their headphones flipping over to purple and their bodies moving close. He doesn’t push them away; he simply doesn’t respond.. Idiots. He’s listening to the language of his body, and they just want to dance with the beautiful man. He can’t hear them.

He has yet to open his eyes; somehow I get the sense that he always keeps them closed when he’s like this. No distractions, no deductions, just himself, lost inside his own transport.  I wasn’t sure he was capable of this until now, of shutting down that enormous brain of his and just feeling. Now that I know, there’s no way I can go back. The fear of rejection has kept me silent, prevented me from making a declaration of any sort, but I can’t leave this place and go home without confronting him, without laying out everything that I have, everything that I want with him.

Decision made, it’s time to plot my attack. Discarding the empty beer bottle on a nearby table, I stroll back over to the purple booth and snag one of the sets of headphones hanging off the rack on the side, already dialed into the correct channel. Without putting them on, I hold one of the speakers to my ear to see what’s playing. Just as I thought, it’s a soft beat, gentle and somehow...yearning. No lyrics, just that delicate heartbeat overlaid with haunting electronic music. Perfect.

His hands drift across his body as he dances. One hand strokes across his chest while the other trails up the side of his neck and into his hair. One hand slides down the front of his hip, fingers splayed, while the other presses into his abdomen. Fingers ghost softly across his lips and down his throat to disappear into the low v-neck, stroking a delicate collarbone. I imagine that those hands are mine. If I’m very, very lucky, he’s imagining the same thing.

I walk over to the purple DJ and grab the pen I see sitting on the table near him. Reaching into my wallet, I pull out a fifty pound note and scrawl the name of a song along the side. I hand it to him with one eyebrow lifted. He glances at it and grins, his eyes flickering toward Sherlock on the dance floor. He’s seen me watching. He jerks his chin up in a nodded acknowledgement, eyes flashing, already adjusting his mix to accommodate [the new addition to his line up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63crAqHlIbM). I wink and turn away, heading for the closest stairway down to the dance floor.

_ Be my water, be my air. _

I slide the headphones on just as my song begins, just as I reach the ground. There’s no graceful way to move through this crowd, but even through my halting progress my hips begin to pick up the beat of the music.

_ Be the strength I need to care. _

The music speaks through my body, furling out into muscle, sinking into bone, drifting through my bloodstream, igniting nerve endings and sensitizing skin as it goes. I enjoy this experience of listening through headphones, surrounded by others but private in our shared experience, even if he is as yet unaware of it. There is no extraneous noise from the crowd like this, nothing to distract him (or me) from the messages of his body.

_ Let my body come on close. _

His back is to me, the long muscles twisting and curving beneath the black v-neck. The shirt is more than damp, sticking to his skin in patches with the sweat of his exertion. His jeans are just this side of indecent, molded to his ridiculous arse, and tight enough down his thighs that I can see the muscles flex as he moves. Every part of his body is more relaxed, languid. Even his posture has loosened its grip on his spine, the gentle curve bringing him down closer to my height. That will come in handy later.

_ I’m about to let you know. _

Hesitation strikes while I am still several feet away from my goal. Am I really about to do this? Things have been fine the way they are. Well, maybe not fine. If it were truly fine he wouldn't have to run away to deal with his transport like this. When his disappearances began, I wondered. I had known it was something physical, but I imagined he was fighting, running, working out, even dancing, as long as it was hard and fast. Any number of ideas ran through my head, anything that would account for the dissipated tension in his body when he returned. But this? This is a release of sexual tension, full stop.

_ This love, this love is getting heavy. _

Perhaps I've been better at hiding my interest than I had given myself credit for. Is it possible that he's been feeling the same fear of rejection and decided that this was better than risking our friendship? Granted, he's never let fear stop him before, but in his own words, this is definitely not his area. Lucky for us both, it is mine. Yes, love is a bitch when it's not returned, but I happen to know that when it is, it can be luminous. And if he feels for me half of what I feel for him, we can be incandescent together. There, that's self-doubt vanquished.

_ This love, this love is getting heavier. _

I finally move the few feet that bring me within touching distance, but I don't actually touch him, not yet. If his typical observational skills were functioning, he would definitely know that someone was dancing behind him, he would know it was me, he would probably even know the route I took to get here. Right now, though, that big brain of his is turned down, focused on internal rather than external stimuli. Which is all to the good, as far as my plans go. The trick is going to be communicating my desire to his body without rousing his intellect.

_ All lovers find their home. _

We all get lost in our own heads sometimes, and him more than most, pushing his body past its limits, even when it's screaming with need. I take care of all his other physical necessities, but in my own fear I've overlooked this one. His body, right now, right here, needs me. I can feel the heat coming off him in waves, reaching out to wash over me. I dance a little closer, feeling and translating the music into a physical form, a moving hieroglyph of desire. The smell of clean sweat drifts from the damp cotton caressing his torso. Without realizing it, his body has picked up the rhythm of mine and we are moving together, not touching. Not surprising. We've always gravitated together, moving in tandem, orbiting each other without question.

_ This is what it’s meant to be. _

I reach out with one hand and gently lay my hand on his hip, just grazing at first, then slowly adding pressure with my fingertips in time with the beat, a primitive morse code communicating a desire for touch, for heat, for  _ more _ . There’s a brief moment, the tiniest stutter in his motion, but he settles quickly into the light grasp of my palm, fingers trailing into the hollow shadowed by his iliac crest. I can feel how low his jeans ride, and I find myself unable to resist slipping my thumb under the edge of his shirt to stroke the soft slope of naked flesh.

_ Let my body come in close. _

He leans into my touch, his body relaxing even further, which I hadn’t thought possible. He moves like silk underwater, an elemental creature of music and sensation. I draw incrementally closer, my chest occasionally brushing his back, my hips grazing his arse. God, that arse! He tries to move back into these incidental touches, chasing the heat of my flesh, but I pull back each time, denying contact, teasing, building.

_ I'm about to let you know. _

Holding him steady with my left hand, the right creeps around his other hip. Both hands clench, digging into his flesh just enough to stop his instinctive backward thrust toward my body. I trace soothing circles into the front of his hips with my fingertips, imagining the bruises I will hopefully be leaving there later. I close a little of the scant distance between us; not so much that we are pressed together, but enough so that we glide against each other from knees to chest. My arousal ratchets up a notch, and there's no way he can miss the unmistakable erection nudging against the cleft of his arse with every beat.

_ This love, this love is getting heavy. _

With his posture this relaxed, I'm able to run my nose through his sweat-dampened curls. I inhale deeply, drawing in the scent of him. His ridiculous poncy shampoo, a trace of cologne, clean sweat, and the smell of his skin, warm and intoxicating. On an impulse, I press my lips to the tender skin at the back of his neck, just below the hairline, allowing my tongue the tiniest flicker, the tiniest taste of him. Without warning, his upper body goes limp, collapsing back onto mine, with his head resting on my right shoulder. A quick glance tells me that his eyes are still closed, face turned to the ceiling.

_ This love, this love is getting heavier. _

With just moments to spare before he deduces my identity, I bury my face in the side of his neck, sucking little kisses into the delicate skin of his frankly gorgeous throat while my hands abandon their posts at his hips and trail across the front of his body, reading him like braille. They run down his thighs and back up, imitating his own motions from earlier. A quick brush across the front of his groin reveals that he is just as hard in his jeans as I am, making me moan softly into the tender skin beneath my lips. He shudders as one arm curls around his waist, pulling him tight against me, while the other hand traces love poems into his chest.

_ This love, this love is getting heavy. _

I feel the skin of his throat vibrate against my open mouth, against my tongue. Oh god, is he moaning? Is he speaking? Gripped by a desire to hear the noises I've wrung from his body, I pull the headphones from my ears to rest around my neck. As my hand returns to slide up his chest, I hear his voice, rumbling deeper than I've ever heard it before.

“ John.”

His eyes are still closed. My breath hitches in my chest.

“ John,  _ please _ .”

He turns his head, putting his lips against my exposed ear.

“ Take me home.”

_ Getting heavy, getting heavier, getting heavy. _

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Body Language [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6972142) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




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